Disentangling help-seeking and giving up: differential human-directed gazing by dogs in a modified unsolvable task paradigm.

ABSTRACT: Dogs are renowned for 'looking back' at humans when confronted with a problem, but it has been questioned whether this implies help-seeking or giving up. We tested 56 pet dogs from two breed groups (herding dogs and terriers) in a modified unsolvable task paradigm. One reward type (food or toy) was enclosed in a box, while the respective other reward was accessible. With both reward types, human-directed gazing in relation to the box was significantly positively correlated with interaction with the box, as long as an alternative was available. This suggests that both behaviours served to attain the unavailable reward and reflected individual motivation for the inaccessible vs the accessible reward. Furthermore, we varied whether the owner or the experimenter was responsible for handling th

SUBMITTER: Hirschi A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8753593 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature